


Peanuts

by MusicalLuna



Category: Leverage
Genre: Explicit Language, Get Together, Jealous Hardison, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, Pining, jealous Parker, pining eliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-12-05 17:24:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11582727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/pseuds/MusicalLuna
Summary: Parker has a realization that affects all three of them.





	Peanuts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesweetpianowritingdownmylife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesweetpianowritingdownmylife/gifts).



> thesweetpianowritingdownmylife picked me for fight back fic and requested some leverage fluff

He shouldn’t be doin’ this.

He’s just torturing himself. Obstinately, Eliot ignores his own thoughts, stirring the batter more aggressively.

What the hell is he doing? Sure, they’re his best friends and it’s their anniversary, but why does it have to be him making them dinner and dessert? It doesn’t.

Eliot sighs silently. But it is, because he’s a damn idiot.

He can feel them watching while he works and it makes his shoulders tingle.

He’s not the settling down type anyhow, this is how he fits best. He’ll feed them and watch their faces while they eat and when they’ve gone off to do something about that heat in their eyes, he’ll stay behind and close his eyes and imagine putting those same expressions on their faces if he went with them.

He can watch out for them and they’re safe and that’s enough.

Least, that’s what he keeps telling himself.

~ * ~

Parker’s skin is prickling unpleasantly by the time she and Hardison get back up to the apartment above the bar.

The one right next to the apartment where Eliot lives. Where Eliot took that woman. The one with the weird…chin.

Parker scowls at the wall that their apartments share.

Hardison is standing at the fridge drinking from a liter bottle of orange soda, totally oblivious.

“That woman had a weird chin, did you notice?” she demands.

Hardison’s eyebrows rise and he lowers the bottle, stops drinking to say, “Uh?”

“The one who went home with Eliot,” Parker clarifies impatiently.

Wiping his mouth with his fingers, Hardison says, “I hadn’t noticed.”

Parker scowls at the wall again.

She doesn’t like that woman. The last time she can remember disliking someone so much—

Oh.

Parker’s mind races. This isn’t the same as last time though. She’s with Hardison now. She can’t just—start liking peanuts when she already likes pretzels. Can she?

“Parker?”

She looks up and finds Hardison right at her elbow, one hand held out just shy of touching, his expression concerned. His eyes search her face and Parker relaxes.

Of course she can like peanuts and pretzels. Maybe she can only  _eat_  pretzels, but pretzels will understand why she’s drawn to peanuts, too.

“I need to tell you something.”

Hardison nods. “Yeah, you kind of got that look about you.” He pauses and then adds, “Did you want to tell me now or later?”

_Later,_  Parker thinks, but her mouth says, “Now.”

“Okay,” Hardison says and lowers his hand. Waits.

Parker takes a deep breath. “I think I’m having feelings for peanuts.” Then, because she wants to be clear, “Peanuts are Eliot.”

Hardison’s eyes go round and Parker’s heart rabbits in her chest.

“I don’t want to stop having pretzels!” she blurts, voice too loud. Hardison stares at her. “I just. Am having feelings. About peanuts—Eliot. And you should know.”

“Oh,” Hardison says. “Okay.” Then he runs a hand over the soft, springy curls on his head. “That's—ah—kind of a relief. I’ve…I’ve been having feelings, too.”

Parker’s mouth forms an o. “We’re having the same feelings about Eliot.” Curious, she asks, “Do you want to have sex with him, too?”

Hardison splutters and then squeaks, “I—well—I mean, I’m not—exactly,  _opposed_ …”

Parker’s stomach heats up and she steps in close. “You should tell me about it.”

Hardison wheezes.

~ * ~

Hardison tells her. Like he can resist giving Parker what she wants?

He tells her about how he imagines Eliot pressing up behind him in the kitchen, about how he imagines Eliot manhandling him out of his clothes, about how he imagines what Eliot’s face would look like when he came. It’s an image that’s kept him up nights.

It seems to do it for Parker, too, because her eyes are nearly black by the time he finishes talking. They go at it like a buncha rabid weasels and have some of the spine-meltingest sex  _ever._

Later, when Hardison is wondering for the millionth time how he got so damn lucky, Parker props herself up on one elbow and looks down at him, her expression serious. It’s kind of a funny image combined with her mussed hair and flushed cheeks and the red marks trailing down between her breasts. “It’s not just a sex thing is it,” she says.

Hardison shakes his head. “No,” he says softly. “Feels like something’s missing when he goes back to his. Even though it’s  _right there._ ”

Parker flops back down next to him. “Can we go chase that girl out of his apartment?”

Hardison grins. “Sure, baby.”

When they drop out of the ceiling into Eliot’s living room ten minutes later, the girl is in Eliot’s lap on the couch, and he’s lost his shirt. Eliot must have cooked for her because it smells good and it doesn’t look like they’ve gotten all that far. Hardison feels a hot wave of  _mine, hands off_.

Eliot tears his mouth away from hers and splutters furiously, “What the hell?”

“Whoops!” Parker exclaims, popping upright and trying vainly to flip her hair out of her face. It’s sticking to her lips. “Oh, hi, Eliot.”

“Oh, uh, we didn’t realize you had company still we just thought we’d drop in, you know, see how you were doing,” Hardison says, carefully keeping his gaze above the neck because the girl’s shirt is gaping open some.

The girl quickly closes up her shirt and whisper-hisses, “Who the hell are these people? Why did they come out of your  _ceiling?”_

Eliot flounders for a minute, his expression stormy. “I—they’re my friends. They live next door.”

“How long were they up there? Were they  _watching?_ ”

“What?” Eliot stammers, caught off guard. Then he snaps, “No, of course they weren’t.”

She glances back over her shoulder and glares at them, making her way off Eliot’s lap. Hardison tries not to look too pleased. “You need friends who knock,” she says, and Eliot watches, deflated, as she skirts around the couch and dips down to grab her purse. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Anytime,” Eliot mutters bitterly as the door clicks shut behind her.

He gets up with a little bit of trouble and Hardison realizes he’s still hard. That he feels bad for. “Sorry, man,” he says.

Eliot glowers at them both and snatches his shirt up off the floor, jerking it back on over his head. “Get out,” he snaps. “What the hell you were thinkin’ I’ll never know.”

“But Eliot she had a—”

“Unless you’re going to tell me she was about to stab me to death, I don’t care. Get.  _Out._ ”

He’s spitting mad and they’ve done what they came to do, so Hardison gestures for Parker to follow him and they trudge out into the hall. Eliot slams the door behind them the instant they’re over the threshold.

“Maybe that wasn’t a good plan,” Parker says glumly.

~ * ~

Eliot is scrubbing dishes in the kitchen with murder on his mind when there’s a knock at the front door.

There’s cheese hardened onto his casserole dishes because he’d gone and made Tia French onion soup for the first course. He hadn’t even put water in them to soak because he’d been so eager to spend time with her. All that ruined in the space of a few minutes.

He scowls and dries his hands, hurling the towel down on the bench before stalking over to open it.

Standing on his front mat are Parker and Hardison, looking like puppies who peed in his shoes.

Eliot gives them a long look and then slowly drags his gaze upward. “Somethin’ wrong with the ceiling?”

“We’re sorry,” Parker blurts and when Eliot brings his eyes back down to look at her he sees Hardison grimacing. They  _look_  sorry. Parker’s practically wringing her hands.

“It was stupid and we shouldn’t have,” Hardison adds. “We had our reasons, but that doesn’t make it okay.” He pauses for a beat, looking strained with worry. “Can we come in?”

Eliot hasn’t been able to say no to them in a long time, so he grunts and steps back to give them access.

They all wind up standing awkwardly just inside the door. Hardison is the first one to take a deep breath and say, “Okay, look, we didn’t go about it in the most mature way, I will grant you that, and that was lousy of us. You’re a grown up and we’re grown ups and we should act like it. Um.”

He exchanges a look with Parker and Eliot gets a very un-funny sinking feeling in his stomach.

They work well together and he likes working with them and he  _knows_  that he shouldn’t worry they’re gonna go their own way and cut him loose but he also knows that if they did they would take his heart with them and he wouldn’t stop them, but it would fucking hurt.

They’re not going to ask him to leave though, right? Because, what, because he brought a woman home?

“You should get rid of your apartment.”

Eliot’s stomach drops to his soles.

Oh…okay. Maybe they are.

Brutal but quick which is, okay, not out of character for Parker, but still. Jesus. He’s been shot in the actual chest before and had it hurt less.

Hardison blurts, horrified, “Parker, no!”

Then he glances at Eliot and he must not be doing a bang up job hiding his breaking heart, because Hardison holds out his hands and says, “No, no, man, we didn’t mean it like that. We don’t want—”

Parker barks, “You should move in with us! We should—we should knock down the wall between our apartments. And you should live with us. Then we can have sex. I mean, we don’t  _have_ to have sex, but we could. If you wanted. To have sex.”

Hardison puts his face in his hands.

Eliot’s heart has started up in his chest again. He keeps losing his footing in this conversation. He plays through what Parker said once, twice, three times, and the only thing he can come up with is. They want—they  _both_  want—with  _him._

“Is  _that_  why you dropped in here? You were  _jealous?”_  His voice comes out thick and rasping and not nearly as irritated as he’s going for.

“I want to have pretzels  _and_  peanuts,” Parker says.

Eliot squints at her. “I don't—what the hell does that mean?”

Hardison waves it off. “Just go with it, man, I’ll explain later. Can we—do you want that? With us?” He gestures in a circle at the three of them. “Do you want to be with us?”

“You really want that? Me, butting in?”

“We’re not us without you,” Parker says softly.

He’s wanted this, or something like it, for so long he’s not sure what to do now that it’s here in front of him. It was easy when it was just a daydream, when there was no chance of it backfiring on them because it had to be _real_  to backfire.

But Parker’s eyes are guileless and certain and Hardison’s chewing the inside of his lip—Eliot knows it’s just because he’s anxious about how Eliot will respond. And if Eliot said,  _No, I don’t think this is a good idea—_ because it’s not, tangling themselves up even further, linking all their weaknesses together— Hardison would back off in the space of a heartbeat. If it hurt him, Eliot would never know it because Hardison would never let his own desires infringe on someone else’s.

Denying himself this isn’t going to accomplish anything though, Eliot realizes. He’s already in too deep. He promised to keep them safe until his dying day, and he knows just how stupid it is to make a promise like that.

Parker and Hardison though, they won’t hold it against him if—when—he fails.

Eliot swallows and nods. He holds out a hand and they both reach for it, holding on to him tightly. “Promised, didn’t I?” he rasps. “We change together.”


End file.
